Chapter 9 - The Cold Storage Ledger
The industrial basement beneath Vance Tower smelled of ammonia, damp concrete, and rusted iron. Hanging from meat hooks along the ceiling were sides of frozen beef, encased in thin sheaths of frost. The digital thermometer on the wall read seventeen degrees Fahrenheit.
Julian Sterling was curled into a shivering ball on the concrete floor, wearing only his silk shirt and trousers. His lips were deep purple, his skin pale blue, and his manicured fingers were numb with early-stage frostbite. He had been weeping for thirty minutes, his tears freezing into crystalline crusts along his eyelashes.
The heavy steel door groaned open, spilling warm yellow light across the icy floor.
Gabriel walked in, his long wool coat brushing against his boots. Behind him, two guards dragged Liam Carroway, who was clutching a roughly bandaged leg and groaning with every foot dragged.
Gabriel pulled a steel chair from the corner, set it down in the center of the freezer, and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees.
"Fifty-four minutes, Julian," Gabriel said. "You still have twenty-three days of cold left."
Sterling crawled toward Gabriel’s boots, sobbing uncontrollably. "Please... Gabriel... I beg of you! I'll pay her! I'll pay her a million dollars! Just turn off the cooling! I can't feel my hands!"
"A million dollars," Gabriel mused. "You see, Julian, to you, money is just an abstraction. It’s numbers on a screen that you move around to cheat the people who sweep your filth. But to Elena, five thousand, four hundred and thirty dollars was food. It was medicine. It was the heat in her radiator."
Gabriel reached into his coat and produced the crumpled piece of paper again. He smoothed it out against his thigh.
"Liam," Gabriel called out.
Carroway lifted his sweaty, agonized face. "What?"
"How much did Julian pay you to evict Elena's building?"
"Fifty... fifty thousand," Carroway groaned.
"And how much did you spend on your watch, Julian?" Gabriel asked, looking down at the shivering executive.
"Sixty... sixty thousand," Sterling chattered through clattering teeth.
"So you had over a hundred thousand dollars to play the gangster," Gabriel said, standing up. He stepped on Sterling's outstretched hand, applying just enough pressure to make the CEO scream as bone ground against concrete. "Yet you stole five thousand dollars from a starving mother."
Gabriel signaled Marco. Marco brought in a small folding table, a pen, and a stack of corporate transfer deeds.
"Every property owned by Sterling Apex Logistics in the Lower West Side," Gabriel announced, "is being signed over to a blind trust tonight. The sole beneficiary will be Mia Miller, under my guardianship until she comes of age."
Sterling’s eyes went wide. "That's... that's thirty million dollars in real estate! You're robbing me!"
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Gabriel bent down, grasping Sterling by his frozen hair, pulling his face up close.
"I am not robbing you, Julian. I am conducting standard corporate restructuring. Sign, or I lock this door until morning and sell your corpse for parts."
